A Quilt for Baby J.

My former classmate and labmate Emily had her second baby in February, a boy! An although she has moved on to a new career away from the bench, she's still a very special person to me :)

To celebrate little Baby J's arrival I quilted up one of my stack of completed tops, a kind of eye-spy scrappy top made of 2" and 4" squares bordered in my favorite regal, deep purple solid.

Chinso helped me audition backing fabrics...

And helped me settle on a red fabric my sister thrifted in the UK.

He also supervised the piecing of batting and basting...

But where he really excels is binding. He makes it into a contact sport.

For the quilting I was inspired by both Chawne's "Vanishing" and Caro's "Pixel" and tried doing radiating straight lines from a single point. It looks really cool in the two corners there the lines start but I think maybe I needed to make it more dense to get the effect I was really looking for. Lesson learned!

My friend was very enthusiastic in thanking me for the quilt so I hope she and Baby J liked it!

More Cage Comforters :)

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I found an AMAZING Le Creuset cast iron pot in someones garbage pile while out walking the dog. Well it seems the, um, garbage fairies (that sounds kind of gross?) are really looking out for me! A few nights ago I was walking the dog down another block and came across a large rubbermaid container full of bed linens. I'm aware that potentially this could have been oh-so-gross, but the area was well lit and I could tell the linens were all in clean condition. So I bundled them all under my arm, stored them in big ziplocs overnight, and in the morning my boyfriend laundered them all on hot.

The pillow cases I picked up were a little worse for wear, jut a bit worn and bleached, so they were very quickly turned into 14 more cage comforters! This time I used the polyfil sheets from inside some old, cheap bed pillows (the $3 kind from Kmart) as the padding which meant the beds are a little loftier and lumpier. On some I compensated for the lumps by adding extra lines of quilting to tamp down poofy bits and to help stabilize the batting for when they will be washed. Once I ran out of pillowcases I used a little bit of leftover fabric from a bed sheet I previously used to back a quilt, and a bit of ugly fabric I snagged from the scrap table at quilt guild.

These will be dropped off at The Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals this week!

A New Sweater for the Little'un

Last week Chinso's purple sweater got bundled in the with the "dog laundry" went through a hot wash and then -gasp- into the drier. Needless to say it would now fit a teacup chihuahua.

It's still cold enough in NYC to freeze the balls on a brass monkey, so for a day or two we made do with his original acrylic sweater and the acrylic coat & Chinso became the doggy equivalent of a Tesla machine. Zap. Zap. Zap.

So I did two things - sewed a cotton fleece, cotton batting and micro-fleece jacket (water resistant), and knit a new sweater! This time from superwash wool because, OMG I'm not stupid.

 

I used 1.5 balls of Washable Ewe held double on US8 needles, cast on 52 stitches and knit in K2 P2 rib all the way through. This time I was a bit more strategic with the placement of the increases in the breast plate and back, added one extra button loop, and did (if I say so myself) a nifty rounded and neatly finished edge on the tail end. All things that had bugged me about the first one fixed!

 

I'm pretty sure that I'm not the first person to ever figure out how to make that edge but I'm proud of myself nonetheless :) After doing a bunch of mirrored decreases of increasing rapidity (K2tog 2x, k3tog, K4 tog) ,I knit the first 3 stitches in pattern then knit2tog, turned and slipped the first stitch then knit back in pattern. I turned again back to the right side of the knitting and repeated until I reached the last 4 stitches and kitchenered those together. A nicely finished rounded edge was mine.

I didn't have 8 matching buttons so I used four sets of two. It's pretty snug, someone put on 2 pounds since moving in with us according the the vet, but both of those things are perfectly fine in this weather.

Upcycled Cage Comforters!

I've become a bit obsessed with cleaning bed linens, especially using a strong cleaning solution of hot, hot water with washing soda, borax, dishwasher powder and bleach to get rid of the yellowish stains that build up. A few weeks ago I intended to give the mattress pad a good wash and unfortunately, it started to disintegrate after going through the machine. Bah.

Luckily they aren't expensive to replace, and the pad wasn't so badly damaged that it couldn't be remade into something useful! Cage comforters for shelter pets, an item needed by the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals. I cut pieces from the mattress pad in both of the requested sizes (14"x 20" and 12" x 18") and used a sheet I thrifted a while ago to make covers.

For some I doubled up the layers of "batting" because one layer seemed a bit thin. Then I had excess sheet fabric so I made a few more of the thinner ones. Ten in all.

 That's quite a stack of comfort I'll be dropping off at the Mayor's Alliance tomorrow after work!

 

Chinso, as per usual, took some time of his busy day of napping to help me sew :) He is now no longer our foster pup, we adopted him last week!

A hat for A

On New Year's Eve we went out to a Brazilian BBQ place in Astoria. A came in with his hat and when it came time to leave.... no hat! The hat was a brown cabled, fur lined ear flap hat with a short strap and snaps to either hold the ears up over the head or under the chin. And it was gone.

To be honest I wasn't the biggest fan of this hat since I think certain shades of brown aren't so flattering on A's Omar Sharif complexion (he's half Egyptian), and it was a touch too small and left marks on his forehead. So! I knit him a replacement!

I chose a free pattern from Drops (Rocky Mountain) and knit with the very, very last two balls of Filatura Lanarotta Chaco in a tweedy purple (purchased in 2006!). I held the yarn double and went up a needle size to get gauge. The construction is a little odd on the hat; you knit a strip that goes over the crown front to back, then pick up and knit two strips on either side and finally seam into a kind of open box shape. 

For the fur lining I bought four balls of Lion Brand Lux Fur from a Ravelry destash, eventually using the camel color. The pattern calls for just a few rows of crochet around the edge of the hat plus the panel in front, but I also crocheted shapes to cover the inside of the ear flaps so that they could be pinned up. I need to tack down the left one a little bit because its a touch too "sticky-outy".

 I added a couple of purple snaps on the sides so that the flaps can be held up and away if necessary. They aren't the most secure on there, I might have to add a circle of felt on the inside if they come loose and need replacing.

A's verdict? Well, he has worn it but I'm not sure it will ever replace the brown hat in his heart :)

Pup in Knits

We are still happily fostering our little rescue pup Chinso, who is currently doing something very similar to this:

... while occasionally letting out little grunts and sighs of contentment.

Fostering is a very rewarding activity, but obviously comes with much potential for heartache. I'm not going to go into the hows and whys of how I cope with this and please don't ask, because for this particular pup it's going to be very difficult when he is adopted. We are currently trying to arrange a meet and greet with potential adopters and it pulls my heart in two.

Chinso is most likely an Italian greyhound chihuahua mix, with heavy emphasis on the greyhound. He has legs that stretch on for days, the classic narrow but long body, and a big chest that rapidly nips in to a tiny waist. And he's fast!

I'm not really a person who takes pleasure in anthropomorphizing animals, but this little dog needed a sweater to cope with the cold. He was underweight when he came from the shelter and his undercarriage is all but bald! I bought a sweater for him that fit in terms of length but didn't fit anywhere else and was chaffing because of his shape. I cut, sewed and added snaps to adjust it but I still wasn't happy.

So this week I knit him his own custom fit sweater!

He was extremely patient and tolerated multiple fit session during the knitting process, and at least two attempts at figuring out where the button loops should go. This was a fast knit holding two strands of worsted together and knitting 2x2 rib on US10.5mm needles. I did increases and decreases as I saw fit to hug his curves, added a button hole for attaching the leash to the harness, then added slip stitch crocheted button loops for fastening. I blocked it a little bit too much so it's a touch loose now over the harness, but it should snug up on a second wash.

Chinso happily pushes his head through and lifts his front paw whenever the sweater is presented and seems to like this sweater much more than the store bought one! For one thing it isn't acrylic so he no longer gets wickedly static charged during walks and it doesn't chafe anywhere. It's warm too.

It snugs up nice and tight on his belly, but importantly is out of the line of fire of pee. I ran out of yarn or I would have made this a little longer and rounder at the bottom end, but hey, it covers a lot as it is.

Gratuitous chihuahua-face.

Gratuitous cute :)

Lucky Find

While out walking my foster dog this afternoon, I spotted a very familiar color partially buried in the snow in a garbage pile a block from my house. I thought it was probably too good to be true and carried on with our walk. Once we got back home curiosity got the better on me and I walked us back.

O. M. G.

That, my friends, is a 9 quart cast iron LE CREUSET pot. Filled with snow, moldy peanuts (?) and burnt on crud. A quick wipe with paper towels told me that most of this grossness was surface, and very easily scrubbed off.

I have some Le Creuset enamel cleaning fluid for my other two pots, which incidentally are exactly the same color, which made short work of the few last burnt on bits and the oily patina.

Even more miraculously? The first hit on eBay was for the lid in exactly the same color for $26 including shipping. This is a $360 pot. Holy crap. Today is a good day!

Broodcomb Cowl

I recently purchased some yarn from a Ravelry destash, and as a perk the seller offered me a choice of several odd skein of yarn for free. I selected two skeins of a yellow, rustic looking worsted weight called Naturally Tussock which was just begging to be knit into cables. Honeycomb cables.

After a quick look through my stitch dictionary and after a little bit of swatching, I settled on a design and set to. May I present the Broodcomb Cowl!

From Wikipedia:

A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen... Broodcomb becomes dark over time, because of the cocoons embedded in the cells and the tracking of many feet, called travel stain by beekeepers when seen on frames of comb honey. Honeycomb in the "supers" that are not allowed to be used for brood (e.g. by the placement of a queen excluder) stays light-coloured.

While I don't have a properly formatted pattern per se (gauge? who knows!), I do have a simple recipe if anyone would like to make their own.

MATERIALS

1+ skein worsted weight yarn (I used just over one ball of Naturally Tussock at 175yd/ball)

US8 16" circular needles

US8 DPNs (2)

PATTERN

Cast on 120 stitches and join in the round with no twisting. Knit 8 rows of K1 P2 ribbing.

   - Although I didn't do it, twisting the knit stitch might look better...

The cable pattern (Wasp Nest 3, P67 of "400 Knitting Stitches" by Murdoch Books) is worked over 6 stitches and 8 rows. Knit 6+ repeats depending on how tall you want the cowl and how much yarn you have.

  

Row 1 & 2: Knit

Row 3:  Put 1 stitch on cable needle and hold to font, K2 from left needle then K1 from cable needle. Put 2 stitches on cable needle and hold to back, K1 from left hand needle then K2 stitches from cable needle.

   - This should align the first K stitch of rib with a cable cross

Row 4-6: Knit

Row 7: Put 2 stitches on cable needle and hold to back, K1 from left hand needle then K2 stitches from cable needle. Put 1 stitch on cable needle and hold to font, K2 from left needle then K1 from cable needle.

Row 8: Knit

Cast off using a 3-stitch applied i-cord. Of course, you call always mirror the rib on the top if you like, I just wanted a smooth edge.

The only Christmas Crafting I did this year!

And in all honesty, it was actually a birthday gift for my nephew (Dec 16th). But hey, seasonal!

I dug deep into my stash to find my only machine washable yarn - Knit Picks Cotlin from forever ago, originally bought to make this skirt but OMG seven stitch nups in cotton? What was I thinking? Also I distinctly remember this yarn being super sheddy, so the yarn had languished for a long time. I wasn't wrong about the shedding, it was terrible! I'm hoping that with a few washes most of it will work its way out.

I wanted to make my nephew a sweater and originally I planned a completely different knit with an intarsia bunny, but the nightmare of ripping and re-knitting that project became lead me to chose a completely different pattern. This is the McDreamy Jumper by Drops (ravelry) in the 2year old size. I had a horrible time with the neck directions probably because I never checked my gauge, so I omitted the final section of moss stitch and ended with an applied i-cord.

The buttons were from a small shop in either Galway or Dublin, bought on a family trip in 2007 and I think they work really well with the dark yarn. I haven't seen any evidence that the sweater fits yet (HINT HINT) but hopefully he'll get some wear out of this winter and during the British summer.

I Tawt I Taw a Tweety Bird

Ever since I made the crazy dog lady quilt back in March, I've been on the lookout for interesting fabrics to make another stack and whack quilt. Last guild meeting, Karen brought a huge bag of vintage baby fabrics for the scrap table. This rather fetching Tweety Bird fabric from 1988 caught my eye...

Bright! Cartoony! 1980s colors! While this could have served as a perfectly suitable backing for a quilt, I decided that with the three repeats it would be great for a 60 degree stack and whack!

First I cut and stacked the panels, pinning through the three layers to align the repeats as exactly as possible. Then (given that the panel was ~17" wide but not cut straight) I cut three strips 5.5" wide. I double checked the alignment then cut triangles using my Creative Grids 60 degree ruler. Lots of triangles!

I used two sets of three repeats per hexagon, alternating the blades but maintaining as many internal hexagons as I could.

I made 18 hexagons all together, and had a few half triangles from the beginning and ends of rows to play with. All I had to do then was pick a backing fabric which was actually fairly difficult! I mean, I do own a fair collection of yardage but not so much in solid colours or in these somewhat pastel 1980s colors.

I auditioned three fabrics:

... a Kona solid blue (used for the binding on the Ikko Tanaka Quilt) and a Dear Stella navy blue with little yellow birds (from the E-I-E-I-O line) that I bought for a song (ha!) at Save-A-Thon in Harlem. Both looked pretty good but I wasn't feeling it and kept going back and forth, then pulled another yard of Timeless Treasures "Farm" fabric from my stash, and well, how could I resist?

So I pressed, cut strips into triangles and then cut a bunch of half triangles to use with the leftovers from the Tweety panels to fill in a few of the blank spots. My foster dog Chinso decided again that a laid out quilt in pieces was too irresistable and that he needed to help me out a little.

 "Help"

I mis-cut some half triangles which meant that I didn't have quite enough fabric to frame out the top, but I did have enough to add a little width to the sides, and voila! A quilt top!